"That combination strange--a lawyer and a blush?"
For some days Thurlow's embarrassment and chagrim were very painful. But a change in the state of the king's health caused a renewal of the lawyer's attachment to Tory principles and to his sovereign.
The lawyers of what may be termed the cocked hat period seldom maintained the happy mean between too little and too great care for personal appearance. For the most part they were either slovenly or foppish. From the days when as a student he used to slip into Nando's in a costume that raised the supercilious astonishment of his contemporaries, Thurlow to the last erred on the side of neglect. Camden roused the satire of an earlier generation by the miserable condition of the tiewig which he wore on the bench of Chancery, and by an undignified and provoking habit of "gartering up his stockings while counsel were the most strenuous in their eloquence." On the other hand Joseph Yates--the puisne judge whom Mansfield's jeers and merciless oppressions drove from the King's Bench to the Common Pleas, where he died within four months of his retreat--was the finest of fine gentlemen. Before he had demonstrated his professional capacity, the habitual costliness and delicacy of his attire roused the distrust of attorneys, and on more than one occasion wrought him injury. An awkward, crusty, hard-featured attorney entered the foppish barrister's chambers with a bundle of papers, and on seeing the young man in a superb and elaborate evening dress, is said to have inquired, "Can you say, sir, when Mr. Yates will return?" "Return, my good sir!" answered the barrister, with an air of surprise, "I am Mr. Yates, and it will give me the greatest pleasure to talk with you about those papers." Having taken a deliberate survey of the young Templar, and made a mental inventory of all the fantastic articles of his apparel, the honest attorney gave an ominous grunt, replaced the papers in one of the deep pockets of his long-skirted coat, twice nodded his head with contemptuous significance, and then, without another word--walked out of the room. It was his first visit to those chambers, and his last. Joseph Yates lost his client, before he could even learn his name; but in no way influenced by the occurrence he maintained his reputation for faultless taste in dress, and when he had raised himself to the bench, he was amongst the judges of his day all that Revell Reynolds was amongst the London physicians of a later date.